If you happen to remember BBC Ceefax, you’ll know that it had pages of news that you selected and read on your TV set. What you will have no reason to know is there were two sets of these pages, and at midnight the system switched from one to the other. It was so that you could set up the pages for tomorrow and they would go live on time, unless you did something disastrously wrong.

Disaster was possible because switching to the new set meant switching away from the old. So one of the jobs on the late shift at BBC Television Centre was to copy over all the old pages to the new set in order for there to be uninterrupted coverage.

I don’t want to think about how many decades ago this was now, but on two different late shifts there, I forgot. From midnight until whenever the early team started, there were so very many blank pages in Ceefax’s entertainment section.

I write this to you and I can feel my legs giving way under me. I can picture the newsroom as I cheerily strode in the next day, briefly wondering why all of these people were looking at me, and then learning exactly and very precisely why from the editor. I can remember sinking, I mean actually sinking. Presumably there was a chair, I don’t remember that bit, I just so vividly and visually recall the editor’s face and how I felt.

It definitely was twice and even if it were over a reasonably long period of time, I mean certainly more than a year or two, my absolute pin-sharp visual memory is of just one of these times. I’m guessing it was the second, I’m guessing that how bad I felt was cumulative.

This week I had the same feeling. I want to say that it might not have been my fault, there is a small, small, tiny, tiny chance that earlier this week an online system let me down. It really, genuinely is a chance, but you don’t believe that, the people I was working with don’t, and neither of you should. In some ways I hope it was me because that means I can prevent it happening again, but in most other ways I wish it weren’t because I got that watery leg feeling again.

I can’t tell you what it was all about, maybe I will when another few decades have gone by, but it coloured my whole week. One incident and nothing was good. I mean, I had various funny chats with people and the current book project is going well, plus I wrote a couple of good things, but all of it was tainted, all of it was coloured by my cockup.

The line between good and bad is so small and it is so changed by the colour of the lens you look through.

I still haven’t seen The Odyssey but one of the writers who first made me want to write is insisting I should and that’s harder to resist than it is to find the time to see it. Nonetheless, if this film is more interesting in the discussion than the watching, it is interesting and a thing that keeps catching my mind is how it used mirrors in its production.

Stop me if you know this one, but I already knew that IMAX cameras are so loud that all dialogue is re-recorded later. Or it is for most films, Christopher Nolan has no problem with audiences not being able to hear his dialogue so I don’t know in this case. But usually, sound has to be re-recorded.

What I’ve never heard of before is that the IMAX cameras were also so big that the production used mirrors. When one actor is talking to another, on set or on location, they are actually talking to a mirror that is slightly offset to show the other actor. They’re not face to face, they’re roughly nearby and they are both emoting toward the mirror.

I’m fascinated by that because the cast have said that they no longer remember doing that, they’ve said that what they remember is facing each other. The mirror work became invisible to them and of course it’s invisible to us because this was a necessity of production, it wasn’t a part of the story intended to be seen.

So incredibly often, though, mirrors are meant to be seen. And maybe this is just me, but I’ve come to think of mirrors in dramas as oh-shit warnings. If you see a character artfully reflected in, say, their car mirror, it’s oh, shit, the director is straight out of school and it’s all going to be like this. Impossibly convenient angles, shots that at best mean the director is thinking of their showreel rather than the story, and at more commonly worse that the director has no interest in the script.

To be fair, often when I’ve seen this, the story and script have been a bit empty, I’ve come away thinking there was no reason for this show to exist. So if the director wants to fill his or her day with shots that try distracting you from there being nothing else going on, fine. They should go for it, but I am gone.

Unfortunately, I’ve also seen what I can reasonably expect to be good shows tainted by this crap. I’ve forgotten his name now, but there was one director who did a few Inspector Morse episodes and I’d definitely sink when his name came up on screen, and I’d definitely wonder about my life choices in committing the next 90 minutes to this. Even though most Morse episodes are well done, even though I liked the books at the time.

There is a fantastic mirror shot in the film Contact, really staggeringly well done, and I believe it was made for specific reasons and intending to convey specific emotion. But even then, you have the jolt when you realise what’s happened and it’s a jolt that takes you out of the film.

Someone driving along and we happen to see their face perfectly framed in the car mirror, no. Two people having a conversation beside a conveniently-placed car such that we see one face-on and one again perfectly framed in the car mirror, oh shit.

At about 02:30 local time last night, says William reading to the court from his notes, I observed a suspicious milk delivery. Now, I need you to know that I am not yet so old that what happens outside my window is my entire world, but when you’ve finished three hours of studying your bedroom ceiling, you’ll take anything.

Plus it’s recycling day and our council has us using these large blue sack things that as yet have not blown away on a whim, but it didn’t half sound like that’s exactly what they were doing last night. I don’t know how I could confuse the sound of plastic sacks scraping across the ground with that of a pickup van scrunching to a halt and its five crates of glass milk bottles cuddling up together, but I do know that I have now had five more hours to consider it.

Which raises questions for me such as whether it’s still hot enough here that the milk bottle I saw the driver take to a house will pasteurise by the time that household wakes up and spots it. Or whether that was in fact precisely why this little van had been as loud as it could be, so that whoever had the milk was alerted to its delivery. Maybe it was an urgent one. Maybe it was an Amazon Prime same-day delivery and the milk had been ordered after midnight. Maybe the cows were on a night shift.

I don’t mean my neighbours.

Look, I couldn’t sleep, you’ve gathered that. All week, I’ve managed to get to bed just ahead of fainting with tiredness, then my head says hello to the pillow and that’s it, sleep is no more than a fond childhood memory. And in the entire eight hours since, all I’ve usefully thought about is who in the world still gets milk delivered. Not true: I’ve also thought about the history of the milk float, which I think now must have been among the earliest electric vehicles. Elon Musk’s fortune probably started with a milk round. Or this second, talking to you right now, I’ve flashed back to perhaps the 1990s when for absolutely no reason, a milk float driver glared at me like I was responsible for the decline of deliveries and the death of his tortoise. He deliberately drove his float slowly, possibly in tribute to the dead, so that I was stuck in my car, blocked for the longest possible time. There is of course no difference between an intentionally slow milk float and one racing at its top speed, but by god that driver was going to make whatever his point was.

That’s the most action-packed thought I’ve had all night and I think you’re probably glad I shared it with you.

Fridays are my busiest day of the week and sharing with you here is always the good start, the bit I look forward to, the bit where we’re just chatting and the mad-dash morning doesn’t have to begin quite yet. No, I’ve got, looks at watch, at least a minute now. Eight hours solid absence of sleep and now I’ve half a minute before I have to start rushing. I should’ve used these hours more productively, you’re quite right.

And I strongly suspect that you’re also right when you think that now it’s daytime again, now that I have to be working, I am going to fall asleep. I need tea.

But of course we’re out of milk.

I was criticised earlier this week for always watching films with a writer’s eye. The implication was that only non-writers can see movies correctly, and the inference I took away was that there are people who will sit through any old shit.

It is true that I get very bored, very quickly when all a film has is good-looking visuals. It’s also true that I have watched movies because of who wrote them where I have never once chosen a film because of its director or for that matter, actors. I need to be interested in the story and that is enough to get me through the cinema door, that is the only thing that gets me there. I can then be disappointed, of course, and there have also been times when I’ve seen a given film only because the one I wanted was full, so I’ve gone in knowing nothing.

Actually, there’s also Arrival. I didn’t know anything beyond the title when I saw that, but in this case I wasn’t going to see a film, I was going to have a nice afternoon out with a friend. Still, Arrival has become very important to me so clearly my decision-making process over what films to watch is flawed.

But even so, if you tell me the writing isn’t important, you’re telling me the film is crap. It might look fantastic, but then everything does. It might feature wonderful direction, but shit is shit no matter how well-wrapped it is.

And I just can’t do it. I can’t sit there watching only glorious cinematography when my mind keeps wandering back to my To Do list.

Which is why I’m torn over whether to bother seeing The Odyssey. It’s why I’m not at all torn over the forthcoming “The Piano Tuner” and “Coyote vs Acme”, because they’ve both hooked me from their trailers. It’s why I deeply enjoyed “The Invite”.

All of which is a long-winded way to say each to their own. But telling me that because I’m a writer, I am incapable of knowing whether I’ve enjoyed a film or not, that is some intense bollocks there.

Okay, I just wanted to say “Clear and presenter danger.” Let’s you and I see if there’s any chance I’ve got something to back that up.

I think I have. Earlier this week, a friend did me the favour of alerting me to how a show called “The Piano” was about to start on Channel 4. She didn’t then do me the favour of admitting that she soon gave up on it.

I’m not going to say that I only watched because of her, because she might hear me. Instead, I’ll tell you I watched because of her, and because it was about pianos, and because this episode was filmed entirely at Birmingham New Street Station. It was great to see the place shot so well, excellent to see it shown off.

But you remember Strictly Come Dancing and the way that its minute-by-minute format was duplicated by Dancing on Ice. (It may have been the other way around. Certainly one copied the other.) Then when that format wouldn’t quite do for the Great British Bake Off, they contrived a version which then went on to power the Sewing Bee, the Pottery Thingy, and possibly others.

All of these have been distilled into The Piano and the sense of sticking rigidly to a format is equalled only by how that format has one single overriding and mandatory requirement. Sod the piano players, sod the piano playing, we must never go beyond 20 seconds without hearing from the presenters or seeing them going wide-eyed at a) how great the pianists are or, it doesn’t matter which, 2) how bad they are.

This is factual television today. It’s never about the subject anymore, it is just about not letting us see the subject and always seeing the presenters.

I don’t know when this changed, when it stopped being that factual was about the subject. I suspect there’s a bit of desperation here, too, as these shows daren’t risk any possibility of viewers switching to something else.

Which makes me wonder if this all happened when television fractured off from three or five channels into myriad ones. It is cheaper now to start a new TV channel than it is to make a TV show.

Then of course there’s the internet and complaints that YouTube is training people into having no attention span. I thought that was true until I watched this show. Now I’m wondering.

There are stunningly awful YouTube channels but there are also excellent ones that figure if you’re not interested in the topic, you won’t watch — but someone who is will stick with it to the end and then probably subscribe.

Everything is cyclical and I know there must be factual shows that are not frantic to keep hold of us. But I’m arguably one of the target markets for The Piano — I’ve just started learning to play — and with the presenter-obsession and the artifice of its competition, I’m gone.

So it’s been on my mind to tell you that when Nigel Farage made his faux resignation speech this week, I was in the House of Commons. I had it in my head to quote you a line from “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” by Mary Kay Place, where Mary insists that “I’ve been around… well, alright, I might not have been around, but I’ve been nearby.”

Only, I like that line and I don’t like talking about Farage. Plus while I did actually think he was in the same building making that speech, he was in fact half a mile away, which is a start, but not really far enough.

And then it’s also been on my mind to talk to you about someone who sent me an unsolicited article this week and said in the original email that I should know that it was not being considered anywhere else. But they’d sent it simultaneously to 20 publications.

When I pointed this out, they got a bit snotty and you could feel them trying to be patient with me. It is not being considered anywhere else, they reminded me, and they are so sorry if you’ve misunderstood reality, William.

They also clearly thought they had made some progress here because they asked me various questions and I might even have answered them, if they hadn’t used that if-sorry approach. I’m sorry if they don’t grasp that I have a delete key.

But all of this is a bit miserable and it’s a sunny day, I’m deep into writing a book I’ve been trying to sell for years, I’m finding out things for it that are so tiny that you cannot believe how happy they’re making me. Tomorrow I’ve got a day off and I’m going to a friend’s book launch. Tonight I am strongly considering curry. Next week my wife comes home from her holiday with her sister. So much is great, there is so much to look forward to and to enjoy.

Although what this heatwave does to chocolate is unforgivable.

So apparently there’s this new film, right, called “Young Washington”, and at the end of it, Kelsey Grammer talks directly to the audience. It’s not as if the film is breaking the fourth wall with a character suddenly turning to us, it’s more a separate advert that will presumably be ditched when this thing finally goes to streaming. But it’s Kelsey Grammer, he’s talking to the audience, and he’s asking them to buy more tickets to this film, whether or not they then go see it again.

“With your help, ‘Young Washington’ can be America’s #1 movie on the 250th anniversary of our nation’s birth,” he says, according to Slate magazine. He continues: “we can send a message loud and clear that America and the principles that helped shape her are still worth fighting for.”

There’s irony for you.

Follow. There’s a wonderful, I mean seriously wonderful episode of Grammer’s most famous sitcom, “Frasier”, called “The Candidate”. In it, psychiatrist Frasier rehearses filming a TV promo for a local politician, then not to spoil this, learns something that suggests this man might be mentally unfit for the job. Frasier now has to record the promo and every line that had seemed positive in rehearsal is now laden with extra meaning. Same speech, totally different meaning overall, it is a truly, enviably fine piece of writing by Chuck Ranberg and Anne Flett-Giordano.

I don’t think Grammer appreciates this, or would appreciate having it pointed out, but every word in that “Young Washington” speech of his is fine, yet its meaning is totally changed because of Grammer himself and the fact that he is a full-on Donald Trump fan. Kelsey Grammer is MAGA, even now, even after everything, and even as the US celebrates 245 years plus 5 under Trump.

Calm, William, calm. I started this today intending to write to you about this ancient business of whether you can like someone’s work if they themselves are problematic. I was going to tell you that someone once said my writing was worthy of Patricia Highsmith and, wow, did I feel great until I Googled her and read about her politics.

Actually, in the middle of the night I thought of a gag to do with this. I thought of how it’s a shame I wasn’t told this today, when Google is so poor that a search on Highsmith would only return sites to buy her books. I could’ve enjoyed the praise so much more.

Then of course there’s that Woody Allen line about “I just can’t listen to that much Wagner, I start getting the urge to conquer Poland.” And then there’s that Woody Allen. There was a long time when his “Hannah and Her Sisters” was my favourite film and maybe that naturally faded away over time, but recently I was in a conversation about it so I started to watch it again. Immediately, just immediately the music on the soundtrack, it’s so glorious and evocative, it slapped me back to when I first saw it, I was back relishing Allen’s and my memories of New York City.

I realised, though, that there was now so much going on in my head about this film that I wasn’t watching the film. I stopped it, thinking that it used to be that my only criticism was how Michael Caine isn’t great in this. Now I also question the journey I remember one woman’s character has where she eventually comes to see Allen’s character is right, that’s bothering me.

Just now, writing to you, I figured I’d compromise and listen to that brilliant soundtrack. I have it on vinyl somewhere but there’s only a tribute act version on Apple Music and checking Amazon, I learn that the CD is selling for £200 and up. The landscape film poster I used to have on my wall as a student is now available, with some digging, for £150.

I think I’d still rather pay that than go see “Young Washington” and spend the whole film dreading Grammer’s speech.

Grammar is fascinating, though, and yes, I’m trying to get my mind back onto the point. That point to me is about the wall between a person and their work, but it’s also specifically the way that he speaks of fighting for America’s principles when his avowed hero is fighting against them. You know this, it’s very definitely a right-wing thing where you must shout as loudly as you can in favour of the thing you are actually destroying.

I’m never going to see “Young Washington”, I’m safe. It doesn’t appeal and the one review I’ve seen says it’s pants, but even though it’s only a tiny chance that streamers will forget to remove that Grammer ad at the end, it doesn’t seem worth the risk.

Maybe I should go write more Highsmith-like prose. While, this is certainly true, that “Hannah and Her Sisters” soundtrack is playing for free in my head. God, it’s good.

I’ve had a good week — I signed a book contract — but there was one part of one conversation that was miserable and I keep thinking about it. A writer nearing the end of her university course asked me about joining the Writers’ Guild and at one point said that emerging writers who do not use AI are at a disadvantage, I think even that they are left behind.

Now, that reads as if she were arguing in favour of AI and she was not at all. She was asking about it because this is how the industry looks to her at the moment, how it’s being presented to her.

But what this looks to me is that she’s been listening to an AI evangelist. There are still a lot of these, and that’s not even including people who sell AI. There are so many people who have invested so much of themselves in this bullshit that they have to say it’s the way things are and that you’d better join in because otherwise you’re never going to get any work as a (insert job title here). It helps if these people are not writers because any time you can devalue something that you can’t do, there are people who like that.

I think you noticed that I slipped in a certain word there. You were reading quickly, so to save you skipping back up, I mean the word beginning with B and ending with “ullshit”.

I do use AI tools and actually more and more: I’ve used AI for transcribing every interview I’ve done in the past ten years. I’ve an AI shortcut that takes a list and converts it into the right HTML for that list to be seen on a website. The other day, the new Siri AI was able to tell me some names of sources of mine that I’d somehow blanked on.

The list goes on but the list will never include having AI write for me or, an example this writer said, product pitch deck visuals.

I could now trot out half a day’s worth of reasons but if you don’t happen to already have exactly the same opinions about it as me, you have at least heard all of this before.

So let me focus on that specific thing of new writers being left behind. Forgive me, this is quite a technical point: if you get AI to do your writing for you, why the fuck should I use you? Commission you? Publish you?

I mean it. There is nothing you can do with AI that cannot be done by absolutely every single person else on the planet. So you are demonstrating to me that you are entirely worthless.

There is this thing in writing that if you’re not a writer can sound very arty and detached from reality. It’s that you should write what you want. As in what you personally are interested in, not what the market demands. It is arty, but rather than being detached from reality, it is stone-cold pragmatism.

Like I said to this writer — who I really liked, by the way, I should say that — today the market is hot for gay sports stories. Great. But by the time you’ve written yours, the world will be onto something else. No one could seen what an impact Rachel Reid’s Game Changers tale Heated Rivalry would have, and today no one can see what the next thing that will have that excellent wallop will be.

Writing what you want to write is not arty or being up yourself, it is entirely pragmatic because you cannot predict the market, you can only write the best thing you can and see what happens when it’s done.

Don’t use AI for writing — well, do if you like but how is that writing? — and never try to write what readers and audiences like today.

Unless it’s zombies. For some reason zombie stories just will not die.